Good news! The New Temple will stay in Simpelveld for a while longer. You still have until Sunday 5 May 2024 to experience this community art project by Ellis Schoonhoven. Don’t miss it!
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
What is it like to reconnect with your pure core?
In SPIRIT + MATTER = ESSENCE, you connect not only with yourself, but also with the other. In the exhibition, you experience the process of creating The New Temple: a textile sculpture incorporating age-old symbols from various cultures and wisdom traditions. Thousands of hands have already embroidered symbols for The New Temple. And you too can participate by sewing and embroidering. In this way, a textile workshop will once again be created in the former convent where the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus ran a successful embroidery workshop in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
“By entering The New Temple, I invite you to reconnect with yourself, with your essence of existence. Experience the power and energy of the universal symbols embroidered in gold, created stitch by stitch by hundreds of artisans.”
Ellis Schoonhoven
community art project The New Temple
The New Temple
The New Temple is a textile project that invites you to reconnect with your pure core. It is a community art project by Nijmegen-based artist Ellis Schoonhoven. Ellis and her team, which includes a mathematician and structural engineer, based the shape and dimensions of the temple on ancient methods such as Divine Geometry, the Golden Section and the Fibonacci sequence. The basic shape of The New Temple is that of the Celtic cross. Its vertical line represents SPIRIT, the horizontal line represents MATTER and the circle symbolises harmony and wholeness (ESSENCE). In its final form, the temple will have four gates, becoming over 10 metres in diameter. The metal frame will be covered with old donated textiles dyed in coffee grounds. These textiles will then be decorated with symbols embroidered in gold, made by over 1,000 artisans by now.
SPIRIT + MATTER = ESSENCE
In SPIRIT + MATTER = ESSENCE, you will experience the creation of the New Temple. In the museum, not only will the team work on the creation of the sculpture, but you will also be invited to sew and embroider on it yourself. This creates another embroidery and sewing workshop in the former monastery.
The exhibition also shows other artworks by Ellis Schoonhoven that were decisive for her pilgrimage to The New Temple.
Admission ticket
A valid museum admission ticket is required to view the exhibition and to take part in any embroidery. There is no surcharge on the regular entrance fee for the exhibition.
